Football Fern Ria Percival will make history overnight when she becomes the first New Zealander to play in an FA Cup final at Wembley.
Percival is in the West Ham United side which will go in as heavy underdogs against Manchester City in the early hours of Sunday morning (NZT).
“I never thought this would be possible,” says Percival, who has a New Zealand record of 139 international caps to her name.
“For any footballer, the dream is to play at Wembley and to get the chance to play there in my first year of playing in England is a massive achievement for me. But it’s also a great achievement as a team and as a club.”
Making the Hammers’ run to the final even more remarkable is that the West Ham ladies’ side is in its first year as a fulltime professional team.
“I think we’ve gained a lot of confidence after the win against Reading (in the semi-finals), that’s put us in a good spot and I’ve think we’ve realised we can compete against these teams,” she says.
“We’ve had two defeats against Man City in the league but, in patches of those games, we showed we can compete and even outplay them at times. If we can take that confidence and what we’ve learned from playing against them in the past, then anything can happen on the day.”
Percival won’t be the first Kiwi to feature in a Women’s FA Cup final. That honour belongs to Football Ferns legend Maureen Jacobson, who lifted the trophy with Millwall in 1991.
The final was not played at Wembley in those days and, while All Whites and Burnley striker Chris Wood has played and scored at the famous ground, that was in regular Premier League action when Tottenham Hotspur were temporarily based there.
A crowd in excess of 50,000 is expected for the Women’s FA Cup final, which would threaten the record attendance for a domestic female football match in England, set at 53,000 way back in 1920.
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